Ever wonder why you're exhausted trying to maintain relationships with everyone from your high school lab partner to that person you met at a conference three years ago? Here's something that might surprise you: anthropologist Robin Dunbar's research suggests our brains can only handle about 150 social connections, and of those, only five make up our innermost circle. That's right, five.
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What do social climbers and gossipmongers have in common? My mother would tell me that both are morally suspect. This moral umbrage is etched into lessons from fairy tales and scripture that we readily pass on to our children: Avoid the schemer and the whisperer. But stories are known to simplify reality. The truth is that that the most effective gossipers and social climbers possess a remarkable grasp of social structure, knowledge they use to cleverly navigate their social worlds.
